The global information technology outage on July 19, 2024, which paralyzed organizations ranging from airlines to hospitals and even the delivery of uniforms for the Olympic Games, represents a growing concern for cybersecurity professionals, businesses, and governments.
The outage is emblematic of the way organizational networks, cloud computing services, and the Internet are interdependent — and the vulnerabilities this creates. In this case, a faulty automatic update to the widely used Falcon cybersecurity software from CrowdStrike caused PCs running Microsoft’s Windows operating system to crash.
Unfortunately, many servers and PCs need to be fixed manually, and many of the affected organizations have thousands of them spread around the world.
The outage is emblematic of the way organizational networks, cloud computing services, and the Internet are interdependent — and the vulnerabilities this creates.
Microsoft's problem was made worse because the company released an update to its Azure cloud computing platform at roughly the same time as the CrowdStrike update. Microsoft, CrowdStrike, and other companies like Amazon have issued technical workarounds for customers willing to take matters into their own hands.
But for most global users, especially companies, this isn’t going to be a quick fix.
Modern technology incidents, whether cyberattacks or technical problems, continue to paralyze the world in new and interesting ways. Massive incidents like the CrowdStrike update fault not only create chaos in the business world but disrupt global society itself.
The economic losses resulting from such incidents — lost productivity, recovery, disruption to business and individual activities — are likely to be extremely high.
For most global users, especially companies, this isn’t going to be a quick fix.
As a former cybersecurity professional and current security researcher, I believe that the world may finally be realizing that modern information-based society is based on a very fragile foundation.
The bigger picture
Interestingly, on June 11, 2024, a post on CrowdStrike’s own blog seemed to predict this very situation — the global computing ecosystem compromised by one vendor’s faulty technology — though they probably didn’t expect that their product would be the cause.
Software supply chains have long been a serious cybersecurity concern and potential single point of failure. Companies like CrowdStrike, Microsoft, Apple, and others have direct, trusted access to organizations’ and individuals’ computers.
As a result, people have to trust that the companies are not only secure themselves but that the products and updates they push out are well-tested and robust before they’re applied to customers’ systems.
The 2019 SolarWinds incident, which involved hacking the software supply chain, may well be considered a preview of today’s CrowdStrike incident.
Various scams are also likely to target people, preying on their panic or ignorance regarding the issue.
CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz posted on X that “this is not a security incident or cyberattack” and that “the issue has been identified, isolated and a fix has been deployed.”
While perhaps true from CrowdStrike’s perspective — they were not hacked – it doesn’t mean the effects of this incident won’t create security problems for customers. It’s quite possible that in the short term, organizations may disable some of their internet security devices to try and get ahead of the problem, but in doing so, they may have opened themselves up to criminals penetrating their networks.
Various scams are also likely to target people, preying on their panic or ignorance regarding the issue. Overwhelmed users might either take offers of faux assistance that lead to identity theft or spend money on bogus solutions to this problem.
What to do
Organizations and users will need to wait until a fix is available or try to recover on their own if they have the technical ability. After that, I believe there are several things to do and consider as the world recovers from this incident.
Companies will need to ensure that the products and services they use are trustworthy. This means doing due diligence on the vendors of such products for security and resilience.
Large organizations typically test any product upgrades and updates before releasing them to their internal users, but that may not happen for some routine products, like security tools.
Governments and companies alike will need to emphasize resilience in designing networks and systems. This means taking steps to avoid creating single points of failure in infrastructure, software, and workflows that an adversary could target or that a disaster could make worse.
It also means knowing whether any of the products organizations depend on are themselves dependent on certain other products or infrastructures to function.
Organizations will need to renew their commitment to best practices in cybersecurity and general IT management. For example, having a robust backup system in place can make recovery from such incidents easier and minimize data loss. Ensuring appropriate policies, procedures, staffing, and technical resources is essential.
Problems in the software supply chain like this make it difficult to follow the standard IT recommendation to always keep your systems patched and current.
Unfortunately, the costs of not regularly updating systems now have to be weighed against the risks of a situation like this happening again.
This article was originally published in The Conversation.
